A Rose, By Any Other Name
/But sometimes Uncle Sam pumps money into pockets less directly, effectively passing a tax cut without actually cutting taxes. Businesses across the country may soon benefit from one of those moves.
Read MoreSafety in Numbers
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There's an infrastructure bill with $1 trillion for roads, bridges, climate resilience, and broadband access. There's a budget reconciliation package with another $1.75 trillion for fighting climate change, child care and universal pre-kindergarten, and extending the expanded child tax credit.
Read MoreWork on This
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Bottom line: the fattest fat cats aren't just lighting cigars with $100 bills — they're lighting up with tax-free Benjamins. Peter McGuire and the other founders of the labor movement would not be happy
Read MoreTax Policy Lessons From Horseshoe Crabs
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But waiting for the IRS to discover email doesn't matter nearly as much as the system they're actually administering. The sad reality is that today's tax code is just as ridiculous as the one they enforced back in 1913. Standard deductions, graduated tax rates, a dizzying array of deductions and loopholes, and even Form 1040 — we've had them all from the start.
Read MoreGuaranteed Winners
/But there's one group we can count on to win big no matter who else loses, and that's the federal, state, and local tax collectors sharing the juice from the new action.
Gambling losses are deductible, but only if you itemize (which eliminates about 90% of taxpayers), and only up to whatever amount of actual winnings you report. That means that if at the end of the year, you're in the black, you'll owe tax on your winnings — but if you're in the red, there's no deduction for your loss. That gives Uncle Sam the perfect "heads I win, tails I don't lose" proposition. (Odds are good that whoever said the only way to win at gambling is to be the house never saw how the IRS rigged the game!)
There's one more quasi-tax worth considering here. Sports leagues like the NFL and NBA are pushing to collect an "integrity fee" equal to 1% of the total amount bet. (Sports books generally collect a 10% commission on winning bets, so 1% of the amount bet equals about 20% of their gross revenue.) The leagues say this compensates them for their intellectual property rights in statistics used in betting. But critics say the integrity fee is more like just a simple shakedown: "Nice place you got here . . . it would be a shame if anything happened to it!"
Here's a proposition we bet you'll like. Bring us your taxes and challenge us to help you pay less. You literally can't lose. Call us today and see how much you're losing — you can't win if you don't play!